


Hot Takes

by youworeblue



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst!, F/M, tw: ANGRY SEX, tw: SAD SEX, wangst!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:47:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28470378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youworeblue/pseuds/youworeblue
Summary: "First Drafts" from my fic,Dead Pasts, Dread Futures.I wrote certain scenes long ahead of time, but then 100+ chapters of character growth happened, and things changed. But they were fun to write, and maybe fun to read.--Ch 1: A different take on how Solas could have revealed his identity to Ixchel. After averting the assassination attempt at Halamshiral, Ixchel celebrates her victory by getting wasted. Solas is conspicuously absent from the party...and she finds out why when she returns to her rooms.Ch 2: NSFW. Angry sex. After a long absence, Solas appears at Adamant to help the Inquisition. After falling into the Fade, Dorian pieces together that Ixchel is from the future. Ixchel flees through the eluvians back to Skyhold...with Solas in close pursuit.
Relationships: Female Inquisitor/Solas (Dragon Age), Female Lavellan/Solas, Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan, Lavellan & Solas
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	1. The Truth

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Dead Pasts and Dread Futures](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26982769) by [youworeblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youworeblue/pseuds/youworeblue). 



Ixchel stumbled back to her rooms and grumbled to herself, “Wish I was a mage,” as she fumbled with the latch in the dark, then went over to the candles to find a light—

The candles lit before she could reach them, and for a long, drunken second, she stared at them with a sense of wonder and horror. She was not so far gone that she did not realize she was in very big trouble.

“Out celebrating, _lethallan?”_

Her shoulders were drawn up around her ears like a guilty _da’len_ as she turned to face him. He was reclining in the armchair by the fire where coals glowed dimly. He had to have been waiting quite a while, then. Perhaps he had fallen asleep.

She felt dizzy.

“Solas, you seem _really_ serious and I am not…cogent.”

But a fuzzy heat filled her as he laughed and extended a hand for her. She loped across the room with purpose, hopefully in a straight line, and took his hand. She wasn’t sure what she was meant to do then. Sit at his feet? On his lap? Oh, gods above and below she was certain she was flushed to the tips of her ears.

“You have much to celebrate, _tarlan’nan,”_ he purred, and warning horns blew in the back of her mind. She dismissed them with the thought that she had just warned him that it was a bad idea to speak to her in this state, but a general sense of unease still hovered beneath her skin. She should tell him to more forcefully to leave. Or perhaps she should be the one to flee. She shifted from one foot to the other, and she tried not to feel how his eyes drank her in from toe to crown.

She did not want to leave.

“For the whole evening, you had them wrapped around you like _oinmunain_ begging for scraps,” he recounted. His voice was so full and admiring, as admiring as his gaze and as warm as the room felt. “But they could not know you were playing by a different set of rules. How could they? With not a moral bone in their bodies, how could they possibly conceive of your motivations?”

Solas’s eyes glimmered with good humor that bordered on joy. She was left breathless by them. A smile from her would send them all aglow, and so she gave it to him: her heart twisted, knowing his fondness for her.

“I was _act-_ tually drinking away my sorrows,” she pointed out lightly. “I got quite the boxing ‘bout the ears after that show.”

He tutted.

“Don’t worry, I put them to rights,” she added.

“I’m sure.”

Oh. His thumb was making circles across the back of her hand. Oh no.

“You should be certain of your own righteousness in the matter,” he continued. “You have never hid yourself from them, yet they could not see what was on the horizon. To watch you stand so firm against all expectation or convention…when every political analyst in Thedas would have predicted only one route to victory—bowing, scraping, playing the Game of the Masked Empire… You stepped out of the ring, but did not concede the match…”

She blinked at him. And stared.

“In that moment,” he said warmly, “I felt the whole world change.”

He lowered his gaze a little, and then he stood, and oh, he was close again. He was smiling. “You have been so patient,” he said. His voice was gentle and lilting—not so unlike the distant string music of Celene’s orchestra. “For some time now I have been trying to determine some way to show you what that means to me.”

Ixchel gulped.

“For now, the best gift I can offer is…the truth.”

Solas took up her other hand and laced their fingers together. She suddenly could not look at him, but the sight of the wolf jawbone was more painful than looking at his face. So she blinked up at him like a startled halla, frozen and afraid.

“You are unique. In all Thedas, I never expected to find someone who could draw my attention from the Fade. I considered myself to be the last of my People… I walked your world and felt as though I were in a world of Tranquil, the only living thing among a population of ghosts… But time and again you have shown me that you carry the embers of Elvhenan in your spirit. Where you walk, flames catch.” His voice had become hardly a breath, laden with emotion. “You have become important to me, more important than I could have ever imagined. You embody much of what I wish for myself, but for so long…you have challenged me, and I have not had the strength to rise to it. Until now.”

His grip on her hands had tightened, an uncharacteristic tell of the weight of what he was about to say. Her heart stopped beating for an interminable moment, and she thought, hysterically, that it would be utter irony, utter cruelty, for her heart to give out entirely and for her second lease on life to end right at the moment she might have been waiting for for so long—

Solas released her hands and took a step back.

She pressed the hand that held the Anchor to her chest and tried to feel her heart beat to reassure herself that she was alive, and she found it thundering with such panic that her chest hurt. She could not help but hear the same soft voice with which he spoke to her in front of an eluvian, eyes aglow with a divinity she had never known before or since.

“What I told you about the vallaslin… Everything I have told you of Elvhenan… I know it, not because I have seen ancient memories reenacted in the Fade—but because they are my own memories. I was there, a contemporary of those the Dalish call gods.”

He clasped his hands behind him and stared into the fire. He was restraining himself physically, perhaps so that he did not run away. Her heart tugged toward him, almost burst from within her ribs, to be with him in the event that he did flee.

“I sought to set my people free from slavery. I broke the chains of all who wished to join me. The false gods called me Fen’Harel, and when they finally went too far, I formed the Veil and banished them forever. Thus I freed the elven people and, in doing so, destroyed their world.”

Ixchel wanted to reach for him, wanted to speak to him words of praise for trusting her with this truth, but she remained petrified. Had he turned her to stone, too?

He continued to stare at the dying fire, and a slight twitch of his ear was the only tell that he was waiting for her to respond. But she was still mute, dumb, overwhelmed.

Solas tilted his head back and closed his eyes.

“I lay in dark and dreaming sleep while countless wars and ages passed. I woke still weak a year before I joined you. My people fell for what I did to strike the Evanuris down, but still some hope remains for restoration. I _will_ save the People…but to do so I require more power than I currently possess. I must obtain the Anchor in your hand, and the orb Corypheus holds. And I must tear down the Veil.”

He bowed his head, as though some string inside him had been cut loose, and he waited.

“I know,” she said.

“You what?” The question was soft, on the inhale, utterly formless—struck from him like a blow. And then, his face hardened. He looked at her with such scrutiny and mistrust that she had to reach for him. She needed him anchored to her so he stayed to hear her out, did not run, did not melt into an eluvian…

“The temporal…time… _Redcliffe.”_ She tried to shake the champagne from her mind, but her tongue still stumbled. She took his wrist tightly. “You told me then, because the world was dying and you were half-dead from red lyrium already. You told me about the burden of a title that all but replaces your name, Rebel Wolf. That Corypheus’s orb was your own foci. Without the foci…you would have to destroy this world, to restore your own.” She spoke in a whisper, partly because she knew Orlesian bards liked to pry, and partly because this couldn’t be real—but she did not want to break the spell of this impossible moment. Her hands were shaking in his, and his fingers were limp and unresponsive in hers. “You told me that I should kill you.”

“To stop me?”

They were silent, and she could not stand it. But she could not bear to release him from her grasp, lest he flee. They had not yet reached Adamant, her greatest fear and greatest failure. She could not lose him yet.

“Then why haven’t you? You have had so many chances. I have been so _weak.”_

Ixchel bit back a cry, clenched her teeth against the flood of explanations. Her silence seemed answer enough, and at last, his hands stirred. He took her hands and raised one to his cheek, cold and smooth.

“Have I been so cruel as to give you hope?” he asked.

“It’s not just that,” she protested. “It’s—it’s—” She squeezed her eyes shut against tears and against nausea. _“Fenedhis,_ of all the things I wanted to think of after averting that red future, I was hoping not to spend my night thinking about that red future, Solas!”

“I am curious what you would have done, had I not told you just now.” His voice had gone cold and even, and she could hardly hear him over the panicked beat of war drums in her pulse. She was growing more frantic, the more calm settled over him like a pall.

“I don’t know,” she admitted freely. And she faltered again. “I don’t have good answers for this when I’m sober, Solas,” she pleaded. “I don’t have good answers for _myself.”_

“Yet this does not explain everything,” he mused, seemingly ignoring her. “You cannot have learned so much from Redcliffe.” He tilted his head, a predator once more considering his prey. “I suppose I cannot fault you for not trusting the ‘evil trickster god’ of Dalish legend.”

She pushed against him with their joined hands. “That’s not it,” she insisted.

“Then what _is_ it, Ixchel?”

“Nothing I say would change anything,” she said. “Please. You put your trust in me just now—”

“A mistake, if it changes nothing,” he replied, and he pulled away.

Her hands dropped to her sides, numb.

“I am _drunk,”_ she said, disbelievingly, “and this isn’t fair. I’m _me._ And you’re _you._ I knew who you were when we reached Skyhold and I told you I trust you.”

“You also said that I was using you.”

“And I asked—”

“You asked for only two things.” His frown deepened. “I do not think I can promise you either.”

Solas turned from her and headed to the door.

Ixchel buried her face in her hands, for she could not bear to watch him leave. The world felt like it was ripping down its seams, and any moment now she would be awash in a flood of black waters she did not know how to escape from. She stood, blinded by her hands, and waited for it to hit her.

She did not hear the door open, and she realized belatedly that he had stopped somewhere between her and the threshold.

“Of course, you are right. This has been unfair of me. And selfish. I have distracted you from your duty. You should not need to worry about a two-fold threat to your world.”

She threw her hands down in disbelief. “Don’t you _dare!”_ she hissed. “After all you said about my convictions, you think _this_ has distracted me from my duty? What do you think my duty is, ma fen? It is to the People. It is a duty we share, and I have known it for months,” she scoffed. _“Dahn’direlan._ Why do you think I have been asking you to walk with me? Because I believe we can find a way, _together.”_

He stood silent, his back to her, head bowed.

All at once the anger left her, and the wave of Despair hit her so hard her knees threatened to give way. She took a step toward him, a sound that was almost a plea strangled in her chest. She was embarrassed by the grief and shame on her face, betrayed by her wobbling lip.

“I have done _everything_ I could think of to prove that to you,” she pleaded.

“I…do not doubt your intention,” he said quietly.

“Then what else are you waiting for me to say?” she demanded, and she was beginning to cry. She raised a hand halfway to her mouth again in a vain motion to stop her voice from shaking. “Do you want to know why I have not killed you? Do you want me to give you a reason to leave me behind? Do you want me to give you a reason to say that I overlook your sins like a fool?” She clenched her fist. “Do you want me to give you a reason to stay? Nothing I say _should_ matter, Fen’Harel. You can make up your own mind about whether you want us to walk the same paths or not!”

She did not know how long he was silent for, but at last he came to a decision. He opened the door, and he left.


	2. Dread Wolf Take You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After Adamant, Solas learns that Ixchel is from the future. Based off the Nightmare's taunting, he figures he had something to do with her trauma. She panics and flees to Skyhold to avoid telling him anything...and he follows.

He appeared so suddenly behind her that she did not recognize him before she attacked. He caught her easily, lean frame hiding more strength than it should have, and tried to hold her at bay. But with recognition came fear, and she tried to push him, punch him, and pull the Anchor away.

“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked.

The Anchor flared in her hand and she gasped, pain thrumming to the bone. Solas made an urgent noise and tightened his grip on her wrists, pulling her back toward him. “Let me—”

Suddenly, she was off-balance, shoved roughly back toward her desk. Her hip bit into the wood sharply, and she thrashed against the cage of his arm.

“No!” she bellowed at him. “Not now—not now— _not yet—”_

"Ixchel!" he snapped, snarled in her ear as he pinned her down. "I am not going to take your arm!"

And all at once the fight left her. She collapsed beneath him and half-heartedly tried to turn from him, caged as she was in his arms. The Anchor continued to build power discontentedly in her palm, sending shooting pain up to her elbow with every crackle.

He eased his hips away from her, even took a small step back, so their only point of contact was his hand on hers, and his other at her elbow. As he siphoned the magic out of her, she kept her eyes trained on the ground.

"Didn't take it because you won't, or can't yet?"

He did not reply. She was too tired to discern if it was because he didn't have an answer, or because he did.

He did not release her hand when he was done.

"It will kill you, eventually," he said in a strained voice. "I know that may not be a downside to you."

"Let it. The downside is that once you take it, you can walk your path alone," she muttered. "You take the Anchor and leave, and then what?" She gritted her teeth and bared them at him fully. "Prove me wrong! _Do it now, Solas!"_

She shoved him forcefully, but before he could step away she fisted her hands in his fine jacket and swung him around so he was the one trapped against the desk. "I know you too well, _lethallin._ But you are too afraid of the event of your failure. You would leave, so that, success or failure, you wouldn’t have to notice my death. Even if it means closing the door on other paths, other roads, that are not soaked in blood!"

She slammed a fist into his chest and he lost his breath with a grunt. His hand fluttered up to clasp her hand closer, perhaps so she wouldn't hit him again. His skin was cool against her heated knuckles—she was sweating with rage and adrenaline—and his palm tingled with magic.

"What would it hurt if you helped?" she asked bitterly into the space between them. "What would it hurt if you didn't leave? Because it hurts _me_ when you leave, Solas."

His other hand cupped her cheek, and she leaned into the touch unhappily. His thumb brushed against Dirthamen’s vallaslin in the silence, but Solas kept his thoughts unspoken, secret.

His fingers slipped up her arm, then, to her shoulder, then the back of her neck. He ran his fingers through the braids that had come loose, and he untangled them the rest of the way; she was aware of his eyes still intent upon her, but she would not look anywhere except the floor. She relaxed her fist, splayed it against his chest and felt the steady, forceful beat of his heart under her hand, but she hardly dared to move beyond that. She was afraid it would break whatever unspoken truce there was between them—break the impasse and force his hand, force him to leave rather than prove her point.

He surprised her by tilting her chin up to meet his lips.

Solas kissed her without restraint for the first time she could remember. His breath was hot and sharp against her face, and his lips were forceful, insistent, against hers. She did not acquiesce, did not meet him passively as she had to date. Instead, she pushed back, allowing a harsh breath of impatience to pass between their mouths; she took a fistful of his shirt and felt the wolf jaw beneath it, found the hem of his shirt with her other hand.

Fingers tightened in her hair, dragged her closer. His other hand pressed against her neck, opened the first clasp of her gambeson and pushed it aside to touch scars and markings and bone and flesh. He pulled away only slightly to breathe, to look at her beneath the heavy fringe of her lashes and creased, stormy brow, and she assessed him likewise. His eyes were clear, and they were dark, and they were, at last, honest.

He surged down to kiss her again, and this time he tugged at her lower lip, sucked at it, until she was gasping and allowing his tongue entrance to her mouth.

Ixchel pressed against him, hands seeking skin, and she found it under his shirt at the long line of his hip bone. Her grip tightened and he made a sound halfway between a groan and a snarl but he kept his hands high and made no move to change their positions. Ixchel appreciated that she maintained control for the moment, grappled his tongue with her own, at once assertive against him and yielding in his grasp all the same.

When he tore away from her, her blood was hot enough to fight him, but he did not put space between them. Instead, he tugged her hair back and took his teeth to her ear, her neck. She tensed all around him, dragged herself closer, hissed through her clenched jaw as his tongue traced the shell of her ear. When his teeth descended on her neck she thought she might fall over the edge then and there.

It had been _so long._ And she had never thought she’d make it here, with him. Though whatever it was between them was still taught and tenuous, nearly fragile, that almost made it better. What would their breaking point be? Another parting? Or a coming together?

With her back arched, finally something close to pliant in his arms, he yanked her around to reassert himself over her, her back to the desk. But then he pushed the books aside and lifted her, one hand hooked behind her knee and the other hoisting her from the waist. He settled himself in the space between her legs and then paused, his open eluvian eyes studying her, assessing—deciding.

She propped herself up on one hand and traced the muscles in his jaw, his neck, his cheek again, with the hand that still pulsed with the green light of the Anchor. Then, she could not stop touching his hair, running her fingers through its short, soft stubble and following the muscles and lines of his head underneath. He came to a decision then and leaned forward.

His teeth caught her lip again when her fingers strayed around his ear, and when she finally trailed them up the shell and back, such a shuddering hiss escaped him that she almost paused. Almost.

Instead, she diverted her attention to hooking a foot around him to drag his hips closer against her own. He was hard through his leggings, and the heat of his body seared her. She coaxed another moan from him, and then she dropped both hands back to the desktop behind her and pinned him with a harsh look.

"Don't you _dare_ run from me, Solas," she warned testily, but it was an unspoken offer: _last chance._

"You'll wish I were so kind," he replied, and underneath the heat there was sorrow, and underneath the grief there was a promise.

He kept her lips captive as he worked on her quilted gambeson. With its clasps undone, it hung from her like a vest. His hands dipped to her waist, up her back, across her ribs, and she held her breath, but he did not touch her breasts. His mouth quirked mischievously against hers—he had noticed her anticipation—and his hands wandered back down in search of the ties that kept her tunic closed. Her arms were shaking where they held her up, and her whole body was taught and waiting for him. When he pulled away slightly to take in the sight of her, watch as he pulled open the sides of her tunic and revealed her flesh, her heart stuttered with something all too familiar and all too painful.

She tipped her chin up to try and maintain her fierce composure, but she wanted to hide her disfigured and scarred body from his appraising eyes just as much as she wanted to see the hunger in them.

He dragged a finger from the dip of her collarbone down to her sternum, over top of her wrappings and then down to her navel, and he watched her chest flutter in the wake of his touch. When he raised his eyes to her face again and saw her watching him so intently, he bowed forward to nuzzle her cheek, lips to her ear.

“Isalan dera na aron tuelan.”

And like that, she laughed, and no more animosity or fear fueled her—replaced only with ferocious joy. She raised herself up to reach for him, to pull him close and kiss him. His bare hands traced heated paths across her bare ribs and back, gentle and admiring as he smiled into her mouth.

 _“Undirthem arulin’sil,”_ he murmured.

“And funny.”

“Few have accused me of such a thing.”

She tensed again in anticipation as he worked her breastband open and let it slide from her. His wide, delicate hands scorched her ribs as he awoke her desire, then pushed up against the weight of her breasts, thumbs sweeping across soft gooseflesh. He kissed her again, then nudged her chin aside to lave at her neck. She tried to let him have his way, but she also wanted to be able to see what she was doing: undoing his belts, searching for any ties on his tunic. She discovered that it was a pull-over, and she cursed him and had to desist, because his mouth had wandered lower and now his tongue traced the spiraling scars on her chest, traces of necrotic damage from an Arcane Horror, and his breath was so hot against her skin—

He paused at her fumbling.

“What was it that the Champion said about control, Inquisitor?” he asked innocently against her skin, and she grumbled in displeasure but stopped trying to undress him.

Solas rewarded her by taking the peak of one breast into his mouth. He rolled her nipple against his tongue, nipped gently with his teeth, pulled at it more demandingly with his lips, and she was like molding clay in his hands, willing, eager, relenting. He began working on the laces of her trousers while he ministered to her other breast. When he had gotten enough buckles and ties loosened, he slipped his hand beneath the layers and dipped a finger between her legs.

They moaned together at the heat he found there.

He crouched and made short work of her trousers then, left her foot wrappings as they were, and then gave her hips a forceful tug until she was seated at the edge of the desk. Every move pulled a sound from her—a gasp, a hiss, a sigh—but this latest development made her breath catch in her throat. His expression had lost its playful softness, and as he rose from his knees, he locked his eyes on hers with predatory focus. He pressed her legs open so he could stand between them, then trailed one hand up her thigh to the hot juncture there—watching her for every change of expression, every flicker of desire.

She could not help but shudder, arching to him, as his thumb found the hood of her clit.

But when he tried to hook his other hand beneath her knee and lever her back to lay upon the desk, she stiffened, stretched forward in opposition. “I want to watch,” she said, breath unsteady.

He gave her an affirmative squeeze on her thigh, but he teased, “Oh, you think we are close?” in a low murmur.

Ixchel shivered, but the kiss he gave her thereafter warmed her to the core. He began to work her with his thumb, swallowing every sound he could coax from her. He teased her, drawing her to edges and back, until small shudders wracked her body and she had to cling to him to remain upright. Only then did he slip his fingers between her folds and enter her. He drew back to watch her react at the welcome intrusion, and then, just before he initiated a rhythm between them, he brushed her hair away from her face with his free hand and whispered, “I wanted to watch, too.”

A flutter of her eyelashes was her only response. Her heart was in her throat; it had been pushed out of her ribs by a pressure building inside her, a hot coil that burned to her fingertips. Her gasps became cries as he approached a savage pace, and he spoke more firmly, Elvhen words she couldn’t catch in her distracted state but words that nonetheless dripped blood and honey and coaxed her—

 _“Jupalan ma sule tel mar sule’din,”_ he told her, and then paradoxically he stepped away, slipped his fingers out from between her trembling legs.

She hadn’t realized she’d closed her eyes, but she opened them to see him licking the taste of her off of his hand while he undressed himself with the other. She curled her toes in anticipation of the first sight of him, and her eyes devoured every inch of skin he revealed. The rich black fabrics, embroidered with symbols she’d recognized from her survey of ancient frescoes, rasped as he pulled them over his head. She drew life from the way the afternoon light hit his skin, made his long, lean arms glow like the petals of a Divine Lotus.

He caught her eye and again his lips twitched—but still she had not been able to coax a true smile out of him.

She had always been curious about the tunic he wore underneath all his layers of sweater and fur, for its construction was unlike any she had seen among the Free Marches, Ferelden, or Orlais. Now she knew it was likely an ancient style. Waxed cotton strips held together not by thread but by some other adhesive to form a mold of his lithe body. It was sleeveless, and as he raised his lithe arms to the back of his neck she realized it was held together by clasps in the back, and though it was certainly waxed, it somehow remained soft and supple; it slipped over his head and left him bare to the waist.

Her fingers itched to touch him, already imagined the silken texture of his skin, the heat of his body, at her fingertips. When he had set the tunic aside on the back of her chaise longue, he reached for her, took her hands, and brought them slowly to the hem of his leggings.

She hooked her fingers in them, found the clasps on the inside that kept the wrapped front of them together. Beneath, she could feel the hard length of him straining for release.

With her eyes still on his face, she freed him and took him into her hand.

Curse him, he barely even blinked.

Ixchel straightened herself up to reach his lips as she began stroking him between their bodies; his skin was like satin, and while she kissed him and pleasured him, she explored the glorious expanse of his back, his surprisingly broad shoulders, the ridges of his ribs, with the palm that held the Anchor.

Ixchel was delighted when, with a gentle pull on his shaft and a swipe of her thumb across the tip of his cock, she coaxed a low groan out of him. He broke away from her lips and breathed deeply, his blue-gray eyes half-lidded but glimmering with desire.

With a firm hand in her hair, he guided her mouth to his neck, and she obliged him, eager to please and tease him as he had done her. She nipped at him gently, a test, and felt him respond in her hand and proceeded to do it again, ministering to his neck and the space behind his ear where she could reach it. His back began to bow, his hands to roam of their own accord. She smiled breathlessly against skin whetted by her tongue.

“May I mark you, _‘ma fen?”_

 _“Ma ghilan,”_ he replied. His fingers tightened in her hair. “You bite… I bite.”

“Good.”

She was proud of the whole-body reaction he had to her ferocity, even prouder of his ragged breaths in her ear. With her teeth and her tongue and the work of her hand, she hoped that she unraveled him as well as he had done her. Ixchel supposed it was fair enough to claim a victory when he could take no more, and he tugged her face up by the hair to give her a searing kiss that she thought might tear her lips, all teeth and snarls.

He pushed her back, took her hands and pushed them forcefully down against the desk. She dug her nails into the hardwood as he felt between them to guide himself to her—

He exhaled raggedly, long and heavy, as he entered her, and her head fell back in a silent moan. He had prepared her well, but their joining was slow as he tried to reclaim the victory from her. Her thighs trembled when his hips met them, when he was sheathed fully in her, and they paused there. His forehead dipped to hers, and he left lingering kisses across the vallaslin that gleamed under a sheen of sweat. Their hands soothed and welcomed each other, reassured one another of the safety of their armistice.

Ixchel at last wound one leg around his hip, ankle hooked beneath the flat pane of his ass to nudge him deeper, and he obliged. Thus began their tryst in earnest.

Solas was true to his word. He was relentless in his pace, and his thrusts drove him deep within her—almost painfully so. She met him with equal measure for as long as she could, but when he dipped one hand between them to pleasure her while he fucked her, she ceded the match to him. She clung to him, mewling with every stroke, until at last she buried her face in his shoulder and gave herself over to white hot ecstasy. He slowed, arms coming to cage her, sweeping up her back in adoring support as she rode out her release. But before it had fully left her, he tightened his grip on her shoulders and began again.

She praised him with broken words, called him home into her, and he at last gave her the brilliant smile she had been seeking as a prize.

Ixchel came again, and again, in his arms, but every time he seemed close he would slow and regain some composure. She was laughing in one such lull, and she brushed her fingers through his damp hair adoringly. “Are you showing off your generosity, or am I denying you what you desire?” she asked.

He nuzzled her nose with his own. “Perhaps I am denying myself. Very well.”

He stepped back, and she groaned at the sensation of him leaving her, of how empty she felt without him. Taking her by the hands, he led her over to the chaise. “Turn around.”

Ixchel was glad that he had not told her to get on her knees. She would have had to kill him on principle. Instead, she graciously bent herself over the arm of the chaise. With a coy glance over her shoulder, she spread her legs.

To her surprise, he was the one who knelt. Her breath stuck in her chest, breathless at the sight of him as he kissed her thigh, her rump, and then pressed his open mouth to her core. She thought she heard him murmur against her skin, and she certainly felt it; she shuddered to her toes. Ixchel stretched herself out along the chaise, at once trying to escape the overwhelming sensations and simultaneously trying to enjoy his tongue against her. His fingers dug into the taught skin at her hips to trap her against him, and try as she might to curl her toes or bite into the cushions in front of her, she could not fend off the rising pleasure he brought her. She was sobbing into her arm when he finally withdrew.

He crawled up the length of her back and sheathed himself easily inside of her, and his wet mouth pressed kisses all along her shoulders as he breathed endearments against her skin: _mar rodhe ir’on…jutuan ma ir rosas’da’din ma tel’aman melin…juveran na su tarasyl…_

Ixchel reached behind her to cradle his head, and she arched back as best she could to meet his lips. She could taste herself on his tongue, and he moaned into her mouth.

Solas’s hips rocked into hers, and then he took up his savage pace again. This time, every thrust had her shrieking for him as he hit something so deep within her it was painful, but oh so sweet.

His teeth dug into her shoulder and she realized almost gratefully that he must be close. She surged up to meet him, panting, hissing as his grip on her hair and her hip tightened.

She had lost track of how many times she came, but she came again with him, pleading, praising.

Solas slowly came down from the crest of his desire and flattened himself against her every curve. His lips soothed the twinging marks he’d left on her skin; his hands slid across her shoulders and down her arms to twine their fingers together. He remained in her for a long while, and she wondered sluggishly if he was already regretting it.

And at that first thought, her mind kicked itself out of its heady stupor. With the sharp clarity of _da’din’sil’melana_ she considered that rather than a coming together, perhaps this had been the beginning of their separation. There was no way to know, but the fear chilled her.

She buried her face in the cushions and drew their joined hands close to protect herself from her own doubts. He squeezed her whole body under his, a question, but still a comfort.

 _“‘Ma’avin?”_ he asked gently, and he began to pull away. She realized she had begun to shake, and as his fingers untangled from hers she covered her head and curled in on herself. She fell into the chaise and drew her knees to her face and hid. Vaguely, she knew she was making it worse—if he had not considered leaving, he would now—he would think he hurt her—and he had, but _not yet_ —and—

“I’m sorry,” she rasped. “Please don’t run.”

“I will fetch a cloth and no more,” he promised. But for every step he took away from her, the colder she felt. But he did return, with a cool cloth from her washbasin. He wiped himself, and then he knelt in front of her. “I will not leave, Ixchel. Please…”

She cracked her eyes open and looked at him over the tops of her knees. He seemed earnest, and concerned, and that made her feel worse.

Having succeeded at catching her eye, he reached up to take one of her ankles and extended it, wiping her skin gently as he went. His sorrow seemed to grow with every muscle he coaxed to relax. He cleaned her leg, then the other, with tenderness that hurt.

They stared at each other guiltily when he had reached her arms. He kissed her burned hand and held it to his cheek.

“This is why I should leave,” he said softly. “I have already been cruel to you, if only in your fears.”

“You can prove me wrong,” she said, but her voice shook.

He looked away, eyelashes curtaining his eyes from her. “I am selfish, _vhenan._ It pains me to know what suffering I will inflict upon you. But—” he stopped her before she could even think of prodding him “—I would do so no matter what path I choose. I understand.” Solas smoothed his other hand across her thigh thoughtfully, familiar touch, affection and comfort imparted beneath his palm. “I am a man of truth, as slanted as it may sometimes be. I would not lay with you if I had not made a commitment, Ixchel.”

“I just…can’t believe you.” And just like that, she lay her heartbreak out for him, though she did not explain what had already passed, what had broken it in the first place. “Not yet.”

He kissed her palm again. “Then I have work to do. _Emma dirtha’vhen’an.”_

 _“Ar lath ma,”_ she whispered.

_“Ara sal’shiral.”_


End file.
